


doves and ravens (fly the same)

by bitterbones (orphan_account)



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Death, F/M, Feels, Force Bond (Star Wars), Injury, Resurrection, canonverse, speculation fic
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-06
Updated: 2019-06-06
Packaged: 2020-04-11 23:06:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19119541
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/bitterbones
Summary: In the process of killing Palpatine and saving the galaxy Kylo Ren is mortally wounded. Rey, familiar with the living force and the its power over like and death, saves him.*For a terrible, fleeting moment it is just them, Kylo Ren and Rey from Nowhere. They look at one another, and though they cannot speak something swims behind their watery eyes that usurps even their fear. Rey will not give it life with lips and tongue and air, not now. To speak those words here, when they have seen death in their dreams and feel it bearing down on their shoulders… it would be cruel.





	doves and ravens (fly the same)

**Author's Note:**

> I deleted this a few days ago because it was making me anxious, so this is a repost.

This is not where Rey intends to die, trapped in a downpour of icy rain, the rusted corpse of a fallen titan shifting beneath her feet as the ocean roars around her. Her intent hardly matters though, as the very force around her seems to thicken with viscous dark energy, emanating from a central maw, the heart of this slumbering behemoth; _the throne room_. Or whatever might remain of it. 

Separated from her squadron, her friends, her _family_ , she winces against a torrent of sideways rain. She can hear the TIEs and x-wings screaming in the sky. If she could look up she’d see the flashes of their ion cannons in the thunderheads. Her lips part and she can taste the salt of the sea on her tongue. And then her foot slips on panel, the angle of her misstep sending her hurtling towards the white caps of the sea. 

A hand on her bicep, fingers finding precarious purchase on her soaked wrapping, leather glove sliding as he _hoists_. Then she is once again on solid durasteel, shaken but unharmed, and reminded that she isn’t entirely alone. Kylo Ren, once her sworn enemy, is her partner in this impossible task. Alone they brave the carrion of the Death Star, alone, _together_ they will face Palpatine; whatever he has become. 

Face close to hers, she can see fear in his sable eyes, real animal fear at the prospect of losing her. She wipes the rain from his eyes, pushing slick, black hair back from his face and kisses him. It’s wet and tastes of seasalt, brief, she pulls away. This thing between them is as new as last night and equally tentative, desperate kisses shared in the eleventh hour. But they have loved one another for longer, she thinks. Much longer. He was always with her, somehow, suffering beside her. 

They had awoken in each other’s arms on this morning, stinking of stale sweat and panic. They had both dreamt of death. 

They continue downward, upward maybe. It’s hard to tell direction between the rain and the subtle spherical shape of it all. Visibility is almost nonexistent, they both breathe, letting the force guide them, following the way it blackens and sickens towards the thrumming, malevolent heart of this place.

Rey realizes they are indeed ascending, when she glances downward and finds the rolling white waves are distant and small. The taste of sea spray has fled the air, leaving only rust and ruin and stale salt on her palate. Beside her Kylo runs a hand through his sopping hair. 

“We’re almost there,” he says, barely intelligible over the downpour. 

Rey nods, the incline of the wreckage is decreasing. Soon enough it will even out into _something_. 

An x-wing, one of its engines blazing red-blue, plummets past them towards the sea. The force of its fall throws Kylo off balance, but Rey steadies him, catching him around the waist. They kiss again, savoring the taste of one another. Somewhere below them the x-wing explodes beneath the waves, a plume of water rising up in a fleeting, but mocking reversal of the rain. 

Eventually they reach a break in the piece they have been navigating, where the beams disconnect and the next section of ship is raised up, a wall of shrapnel left for them to climb. Dangerous in the best of conditions, they can hardly look up as they grope for handholds, boots swiping precariously against rusted rivets, each foothold a gamble. Rey yelps as her fingers slip but she regains her balance and composure, ducking her head and wiping her eyes as the rain pelts down harder. 

They are very close. Rey’s entire body is uneasy at the violence with which the force vibrates. As she reaches the top and her palms slap haphazardly against the steel she feels as if she’s choking on the encroaching darkness. Kylo, having beaten her to the top, pulls her up and crouches beside her, gloved hand running soothing circles over her back. Where Rey is unused to the darkness, Kylo has spent the whole of his life enveloped in it. He breathes easy despite the pressure, and Rey suspects the coming battle will be far more treacherous for herself than for her… for Kylo. 

The incline is vanished now. She rises up on shaking knees, then pushes herself to her feet. She finds the steel flat beneath her heels. Through the rain, thundering down endlessly, they walk. Their breaths are jilted, hearts thundering. Spirits heavy with anxiety, they are unable to speak. The walkway rounds out into what once had been a room. 

For a terrible, fleeting moment it is just them, Kylo Ren and Rey from Nowhere. They look at one another, and though they cannot speak something swims behind their watery eyes that usurps even their fear. Rey will not give it life with lips and tongue and air, not now. To speak those words here, when they have seen death and their dreams and feel it bearing down on their shoulders… it would be cruel. 

Kylo has no such qualms, his lips part and through the downpour she swears she hears him suck in the penultimate breath. He isn’t given the chance to speak. Their rain distorted surroundings come alive with dark, stalking shapes, materializing as if from nowhere. 

They spin, bodies falling into fighting stances with ease unpracticed but instinctual. In a twisted recreation of Snoke’s fall they stand back to back, sabers spitting bright in the drear, sizzling sweetly with each raindrop that crosses their beams. Rey bears her teeth and behind her Kylo bellows out a battlecry as the armored wraiths of the Imperial Guard descend on them in a wave of time-dulled crimson. 

Gracelessly, Rey slips before she can lunge, body jerking towards the rusted ground. She cracks the back of her head on the floor and for a moment she is stunned, staring up into the tumult of the roiling clouds, lightsaber skidding through an inch of water to rest some few feet away, too far to reach. As she struggles up, the guards reach them, and the force-pike of the nearest one is thrust forward. Time slows, she reels, fingers scrambling for purchase in the wet, bracing herself for agony of a vibro edged blow. 

The air tints red, she can feel the sonic vibrations of the pike as it descends towards her face, _her eyes_. She winces, red behind the lids, face suddenly warm. 

“Rey!” Kylo roars, animal, and his desperation fuels her urgency. Her eyes open and she finds a red saber spitting just inches above her face, hissing with rain and the pressure of the force-pike bearing down on it. 

She rolls to the side, finding her saber where it hisses and steams in a puddle. Then, with a shout Rey launches herself back into the frey, slipping easily into step beside Kylo, dividing the guards in half. They move with the grace of the water that drenches them, ducking and feinging and weaving between foes and each other. Rey knows where he will be before he is there, and for a brief moment it would seem they have the upper hand, sabers reflecting brightly off the standing water that drenches their boots; light violet on the raindrops. 

Then Kylo loses his footing and Rey loses the rhythm of the battle. Separated, Rey is herded towards the edge of the platform, hundreds of feet of open air between herself and the crashing waves below. Above them, beyond them, lightning lances through the sky flashing wild in her eyes. Over their shoulders, between the sleek mould of their helmets, she can see that the other four have fallen on Kylo, pikes sparking and sizzling as they sear through his cape and tunic.

With a mighty clap of resounding thunder she lunges, soaked to the bone, desperate to take on some of his burden as he swings his saber wildly and without form, overwhelmed. But her attempt is repelled, her own assailants crossing their pikes, and when she slams into them her body is shot full of spark and sonic waves. Yelping, Rey reels backwards, body singing with pain, her heels tipping just past the jagged edge of what had once been the throne room floor. Behind her she can hear the ocean, tumultuous, endless and savage. And in that moment, as the pikes, humming with electricity, edge ever nearer; she remembers Ahch-To, and Luke’s first lesson, the ocean far below them, the rhythm of it. 

Closing her eyes, wet with tears, she reaches out… _and finds nothing_. There are only two presences alive on the platform, light and dark and everything in between, but only two. _No_. She sucks in a sharp breath, honey eyes fluttering open, panicked. There is another, the darkness she had felt, still feels weighing heavy on her shoulders. 

She looks to the guards and suddenly it is so incredibly obvious that she could scoff, but she doesn’t. Behind those phantom masks free of droplets, and those dry robes that sway opposite the wind, Kylo still thinks they’re real. And these mind tricks leave wounds. The flesh of her forearms is tender; wrappings burned away despite their saturation, revealing blistering pink wounds. 

“Kylo!” She shouts, stepping away from the edge, saber at her side, no longer afraid. Her two illusions tighten their stance, then spring, force-pikes swinging. They pass through her like nothing, wisps of smoke, dissipating on contact with her skin. Because an illusion is only effective so long as the victim is kept in the dark. 

Rey knows he heard her by the way he angles his neck, still he fights them. Four wraiths, untouched by rain, ghosts from a time past. Yet with each sparking strike of a pike he cries, and Rey’s heart aches with the evidence of his pain. She covers the distance between them easily, and with a sweep of her burned arm she cuts away a guard into dust. 

“They aren’t real!” She half sobs through the rain, “It’s a trick!” A flash of lightning and a clap of thunder, rain so heavy she thinks she has never known dry. Kylo rises, slowly, body aching from when the weapons had been real. The pikes pass through him, useless as he knows their truth. Rey thinks she sees the beam of his saber _swell_ with his rage, the unstable spit of it wild as the lightning above. 

His anger echoes in the force around them, then he leaps into the air and spins. There is no grace to the movement, only force and power and deadly strength. Saber outstretched,he carves a neat circle through the remaining three guards. Upon landing with a heavy _thunk_ she can feel through the metal floor, both his rage and the phantoms disintegrate into nothing. Leaving only Kylo and Rey in the cacophony of the rain. _And the darkness_. 

The darkness laughs, loud and wicked. 

They have only the briefest of moments, not even enough time to close the distance for a final embrace before it emerges from the rainfall in a wall of water. Great, dark and terrible it appears with such force that Rey is sent reeling, only having caught a glimpse of its citrine yellow eyes. 

_Palpatine_ , or whatever monstrosity he has become. The rain makes everything less clear, but his shape is unnatural, inhuman. Rey shivers with cold and unease as she regains her balance and drops into a defensive stance. Kylo, a wet blur on the other side of the emperor’s gesticulating figure, is doing the same. Rey can see how he is favoring one leg, wounded by the guard. 

“Skywalker.” His voice, twisted and rotted with time booms louder than the thunder above, “ _Yet lives_.” A malformed, skeletal hand emerges and motions to Kylo, “Let me remedy this. I shall finally put to rest that which I created.”

He sweeps his arms outward and tendrils of indigo lightning erupt from his jaundiced fingers. Rey is struck in the chest. It courses through her whole being, she can feel it in her teeth and gut, taste the terrible power of him on her tongue. Her lightsaber is gone, flung away, somewhere towards Kylo. 

Worst of all, she cannot move. She tries, straining, face scrunching with exertion vision blurred with rain she can’t wipe from her eyes. It’s futile, she is debilitated, a power beyond herself leaving her limbs useless. 

As if he senses her frustration, the shadow speaks, though he does not deign to look upon her prone from, “You are no one, _girl_. This is a battle generations in the making, a battle in which you will play no part.” 

She sees Kylo, still on his feet, facing his family’s creator and bane alone. _My love,_ she thinks, and she wishes she could tell him, press her lips to his one final time. They hadn’t slept together, the previous night only shared kisses and tentative touches; their love was so new. Choking on water and a sob she manages to raise her head, only to have it drop forcefully back to the durasteel. Her vision blurs and she _weeps_. 

He doesn’t have his saber, she doesn’t know where its gone or why, but in doging the lighting he has lost his only chance of winning this impossible fight. Kylo is already hunched in pain from his previous wounds. 

_They were supposed to do this together._

Rey struggles against the invisible bindings that hold her and _screams_. 

Darth Sidious, the last true lord of the sith, raises his arms and all around them wreckage and shrapnel rises into the air. Hovering menacingly, then, with a yellow smile, a flick of a deformed wrist it all comes hurtling inward, towards Kylo. 

Rey hisses uselessly in an inch of standing water, looking on in abject terror as a sphere of Death Star debry closes in on Kylo and Palpatine _laughs_. 

But he moves, water rising white under his heels, and a gloved hand extends assuredly. Her saber, the saber of his Luke Skywalker, of _Anakin_ , slaps wetly into his palm. The blade roars to life, spitting fiery cerulean as he carves his way through the metallic deluge Palpatine had thrust at him. As the remaining scrap is dispatched or flies past him, he begins to run, charging straight towards the beast that has haunted his lineage since its inception. 

Kylo’s battlecry is one of anguish, of sheer desperation and longing to be _free_ of this menace. Rey, fingers twitching against the rust, echoes it. When he is free they can begin again. But Palpatine raises a terrible hand, unmoving, unafraid, _grinning_ and Rey’s cry morphs into a shriek as more lightning erupts from his fingertips. Kylo is moving to quickly, his momentum too great to slow down as he hurdles face first into an electrifying death. But Kylo is a Skywalker. 

The force is with him, _always_ and he ducks into a slide, rainwater carrying him a scant few inches under the buzzing tendrils. Before Sidious can react, Kylo is at his feet and both the man and his saber are rising up. The movement is clean, a flash of silver-blue, and the left arm of the emperor is left wriggling, detached in a puddle as he stumbles backwards and howls. 

Kylo, saber swinging with characteristic aggression, follows him. Body weak and bleeding but eyes flaming with wild determination, beautiful lips set in a solemn scowl. 

_This is it_ , Rey thinks, premature hope blossoming foolishly in her chest, _this is the end_. With the loss of his limb and composure Palpatine’s hold on her has begun to weaken, and she manages to scramble to her hands and knees. Her eyes never leave them, Skywalker and Sidious. 

“You were never anything but trouble,” Sidious spits, “Snoke insisted we use you, that your diluted blood made you _weaker_. I should have had you killed when you were a _whelp_ , along with your whore mother.” 

Kylo doesn’t deign to reply, only feet away, he sneers and lunges, thrusting the saber forward, striking true. A beam of bright blue bursts from the back of Palpatine’s shadowy robes. The blade of the legacy he had enabled serving as his final doom. Rey hears him spit and cough, a mortal man still despite how the dark had cradled and deformed him. 

She smiles, hold broken, rising to her feet. 

Kylo looks stunned, amazed as his onyx eyes are cast glittering sapphire. It’s over. 

It’s all over. 

Then Palpatine raises his remaining arm, and with a burst of darkness Rey feels in her chest, thrusts it through Kylo’s abdomen. Nails and knotted fingers erupt bloody from Kylo’s back, and he jolts from the shock of being impaled, lips parting, brows furrowing. 

Through their bond Rey feels the shock, and as he pushes Palpatine’s corpse off of his lightsaber, the pain. 

“No!” She screams, raw, bloody in her throat. She rushes to him as he collapses backwards onto the platform, gloved hands clutching the gaping hole in his midriff. 

Rey collapses to her knees beside him, dragging his wilting body into her arms. He’s so pale, eyes already distant. The water around them tints scarlet with his blood. So much blood. Pressing her lips to his hair and his cheeks and his parted mouth, she sobs, feeling his dying breaths against her lips. 

Reaching into their bond, she feels it brittleing. She’s losing him. She’s losing him and they’ve only just begun. 

“I love you.” She gasps, trying to make him look into her eyes. But he doesn’t hear her, he only stares, blinks slowly, and then he dies. 

Kylo Ren dies in her arms. 

_Ben Solo_ dies in her arms. 

The darkness that had plagued them is lifted, but Ben Solo is _dead_. 

Her wail is a silent one, aimed at the heavens where fighters still clash and thunder still rolls. Rey clutches his raven head to her breast and lets the whole world know her pain, the agony she feels as the bond breaks. Fire in her veins, searing pain behind her eyes.

_It’s unfair_. Why? Why did it happen like this? He was free, he would have come home with her, loved her, they would have been a family, _galaxy be fucking damned_. 

Whimpering, she falls over him, fingers finding the mortal wound. Palpatine created the Skywalker’s, and so he ended them, too. It is sickeningly poetic. 

It isn’t fair. 

How long she remains there cradling a body in her arms, she isn’t sure. But the rain never stops. It soothes the burns and washes the blood away and leaves them only Ben and Rey. 

The battle above has quieted, and the sky beyond the weeping clouds has grown dark. Rey remembers when she had first touched the darkness. She remembers life and death. Her eyes widen a fraction as she swallows back bitter hope. 

She read about the living force in the Jedi Texts, she knows what it is, how it inhabits all things and gives them life. Choking on a sob Rey shuts her eyes and reaches within herself to find it. He can have some of hers. She will live her life as half a person so long as she does it beside this man. Rey won’t leave this cursed place without him by her side, breathing, speaking, _Ben_. 

Reaching inward, she finds it, at her core, inhabiting her whole body, the energy that gives her life and consciousness. And suddenly, she feels it all, the network of living beings existing in tandem; Poe in the skies above, Finn and Jannah and Rose battling on the ground, Leia, weak but alive aboard her transport. All of them and everything in between. Grass, and porgs and rats and fish in the sea far below. The force is alive and it feels her feeling. 

Rey could beg. But she doesn’t. Instead she simply directs it, she feels his wound, all blood and viscera. Then she feels the force within her, humming in the air around her, and she _directs_ it. 

“Go here,” She mouths. Eyes still shut tight, brow furrowed in concentration as she wrestles to control something not meant to be controlled. 

Feeling warmth in her chest, on her skin despite the rain ever falling, she opens her eyes. The light emanating from under her hands is near blinding. She can feel his flesh mending beneath her fingertips and hope swells unbidden in her gut. 

When it ends and the force recedes from her the rain washes the last of the blood away from his pale skin. There is a scar, puckered and pink, but his wound is healed. As she glances over him she finds that all of his wounds are healed. 

Then she sees his eyes flicker behind sallow lids. They open, revealing dark eyes, tired and confused. 

“Rey?” Ben rasps, and she kisses him. It tastes of blood and tears and new beginnings.

**Author's Note:**

> Please tell me what you think, I poured a little bit of myself into this one. 
> 
> Second chapter (the one with the smut) incoming shortly. **EDIT: There will be no second chapter.**
> 
> My Twitter: [Link](https://twitter.com/_bitter_bones_)  
> My Tumblr: [Link](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/dvrkrey)
> 
> I'm going to begin filling prompts in both of those^ places again soon <3


End file.
